Explore "Ut Sementem Feceris, Ita Metes" by Voltairine De Cleyre on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(To the Czar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death in Siberia.)
How many drops must gather to the skies / Before the cloud-burst comes, we may not know; / How hot the fires in under hells must glow / Ere the volcano's scalding lavas rise, / Can none say; but all wot the hour is sure!
Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure!
He may not say how many blows must fall, / How many lives be broken on the wheel, / How many corpses stiffen 'neath the pall, / How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal; / But certain is the harvest time of Hate!
And when weak moans, by an indignant world / Re-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled, / Who listens, hears the mutterings of Fate!
Philadelphia, February, 1890.